"The common usage of the word resilience suggests the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. The word resilience means “to rebound, to leap or spring back.” There is also a connection to the word salient as in “salient point,” the tipping point at which the heart of a human embryo seems to leap towards life. Seen that way, the point of resilience is not simply “going back” to a state that existed before; nor is it seeking a “new normal.” True resiliency involves both springing back up and arriving at a new starting point in life.
In botany the term for the deepest root of a plant or tree is the radicle. This radicle stem is the first root to emerge from the seed and its appearance marks the moment of quickening life. Thus, the embryonic leap of the human heart parallels the radical impulse of the primary root that breaks through the seal of the seed in order to spring forward into life.
Human nature, like great nature, harbors a deep, but often untapped, capacity for resilience that leads, not back to how things were before, but rather leaps forth with new ways of envisioning life. Only then can the meaning of a life crisis be found in a process of inner growth rather than a simple return to the spell of normalcy. What I am calling radical resiliency involves using the hidden energy in a crisis to generate creative vision and new starting points that quicken the pulse of life at all levels."
Michael Meade
